


Love in Binary

by kespa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Times, Alpha Dean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Beta Castiel, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kespa/pseuds/kespa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Dean loses his head and one time he loses his heart</p><p>Cas is a beta. He should fade into the background like a ghost, a calming presence to keep the raging hormones of alphas and omegas under control.</p><p>Dean is an alpha. His 17 years and his absent father don’t help to keep his aggression in check. Yet nothing makes him lose his head quite like Castiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Time

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is my first fic, so it's rushed and short and very tame indeed. I know if I keep rewriting and reading it I'll only end up deleting it so I'm posting quickly. It's a pretty cliched high school AU, except that it isn't quite the typical Alpha/Omega pairing you see in a/b/o. Feedback welcome (and nervously anticipated). I hope you enjoy. You've no idea how hard it was to stop myself from making this a 25-chaptered serious fan fiction rather than a long drabble.

We started with a car crash. The first time Dean lost his head. The sound was of a screech of old breaks and the bellow of an enraged alpha. The sight was of a worn-down hatchback swerving to narrowly avoid side-swiping a very large and very black Impala, as it backed out of the driveway of a suburban house overflowing with intoxicated teenagers. That car could only belong to one person.

A few people started to come out of Crowley’s party to stare and mutter. I was dazed, blinking through my windscreen at the bonnet of my car, looking over at Meg, who had commandeered the driver’s seat despite my protests. She gripped the steering wheel as if wondering how the many shots of vodka had contributed to her almost totalling two vehicles that were not her own.

Dean pulled himself out of his Impala and lifted me bodily as I got out of my own car, his eyes flashing alpha-red. He gripped me, claw-like, by the collar of my shirt and pinned me against the side door, swearing and cussing in my face.

Why did it have to happen to me? I was nobody. I was just another beta ghost in a sea of alphas and omegas. The new alpha in school, the one I instantly disliked, the one I secretly hated myself for having a ridiculously large teenage crush on, the leather-jacketed classic-car-driving Dean Winchester, alpha-ing out in anger before me.

All I know is: thank goodness Meg was driving that night.


	2. The Second Time

The second time Dean lost his head was after weeks of odd conversations and private acknowledgements - he had caught me the day after the disastrous party, walking down country lanes to work as my poor beaten car had failed to start that morning.

Dean had fixed my car for free as an apology for, and I quote, ‘going all alpha on my ass’, and once he knew my full name he took to calling me *angel*, just to watch me frown. I knew about his kid brother and his love of pie, and even a little about his respect for Bobby and his complicated feelings towards his father. He dragged me to The Roadhouse between shifts and talked about hunting, American rock bands, how clever Sammy was and how ugly my favourite beige trench coat was when paired with my work uniform. I sat in relative silence and wondered what had happened to my boring, non-assuming beta life.

But I am so very good at getting into trouble, and it was only a matter of time before I got Dean involved. Alistair - tall, emaciated, twenty-something, drugged-up Alistair - had cornered me behind the cinema on my way back from work to pay me back for my smart mouth weeks before. 

I was outmatched against any alpha, even one as pallid and medicated as Alistair Smith, but I never could control my mouth. I had gotten a few punches in before he really laid into me, and I could only try and limit the damage. Dean came up behind him and pulled him into a lock. Alistair still did some damage, but he slunk away eventually and Dean turned to me. He pulled me up and the smell of his leather jacket was faint but soothing, in a weak parallel of how omegas must feel at the smell of their bondmates. It was too late to think clearly and my head pounded with blood and adrenaline - it was all to much for me to think straight.

He drove us out of the town, and I had a beer in the front seat of his Impala with him, while I poked around my black eye. Dean joked and his tongue pressed at his split lip repeatedly. He never asked me why Alistair had chosen me for the fight. 

Instead, he asked with a grin: ‘What kind of beta are you anyway?’ I stared. He stared back. The air was heavy. Dean got an odd look on his face and leaned in. We kissed.


	3. The Third Time

Just one kiss. Because the next time Dean lost his head was after months of ignoring me. Except he hadn’t been ignoring me - I used to lay awake at night and try to convince myself that he hadn’t been rubbing his alpha-status in my face every day at school, but it was useless. Every week I would be forced to walk past the supply closet opposite the stairs to get to English Lit, and every week Dean would fall out of it with another giggling petite omega. Every morning he would chat loudly in homeroom about sports, omegas, parties. Every day I kept my head down like the years before, only it was so much harder now.

I meant to endure it, to move on, to become that ghost again that everyone expected me to be. But Alistair had cornered me again the night before, so bruises were hidden underneath my knitted jumper, and Dean smirked and acknowledged my existence for the first time in weeks, only to mock me casually, leaning against the wall of the corridor in that damn leather jacket. So I responded. I was sarcastic; I was antagonistic. And Dean lost his head for the third time.

He humiliated me that day. There, in the corridor between Science and English, with students moving between classes, he made it known that I was a freak; that I was gagging for it; that I was obsessed with getting an alpha knot; that he was disgusted by my stalking. I felt the phantom sensation of fists to my stomach and a knee to my back, of the jocks’ shoves and Alistair’s ministrations and the time I stood between an alpha and Anna, shielding my omega sister. Dean didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Everyone thought that betas were so different, so bland. Alphas and omegas had their mating dances and their aggression and their submission and betas weren’t allowed any of it. Why would I want to invest in that?

So I gave up on Dean Winchester.


	4. The Fourth Time

The fourth time he lost his head I only saw the aftermath. I had made friends with Kevin Tran - a mild, calming beta in the year below – who was an honors student, already preparing for his Ivy League applications. Kevin had joined the staff at the Angel & Devil Cafe where Meg and I served coffee. We went to the cinema together after work sometimes - once, memorably, to see True Instinct - the 4D teen phenomena that plastered pictures of alpha werewolves and swooning teen omegas over the ODEON for weeks. We sat in the film and ate popcorn while the alpha-omega couples around us took in not only the 3D visuals but also the scents being pumped into the room, until the sex scene where everyone in the place spontaneously decided to mack apart from the two betas, who could barely smell the artificial pheromones causing such havoc. It was an embarrassing and ultimately hilarious trip.

Of course I tried to mess it up as I always do - I was lonely and I was tired and I told him about Dean and my ridiculous feelings. I kissed Kevin then, once. I suppose I hoped I could be a normal beta that likes kissing normal betas. But all I thought of was Dean. It was just as well - Kevin was only interested in studying and getting scholarships. He was a good friend and he listened to my problems.

Dean saw us on night. He had come over to the Angel & Devil - knowing I worked there - and he saw Kevin and I sitting in the window, sharing a sundae. It had been a hard night at work and my head was still stuck on a certain brash alpha. As my only real friend (apart from Meg who never counts because she tries to crash my car and calls me Clarence), Kevin had dragged me out and bought me sugar, and proceeded to make me laugh copiously with stories about his crazy relatives.

All Dean saw was me, with another beta - happier than I had been for months. He left for a bar. It was ten o’clock at night and Dean knew all of the worst dives. They were the best places to hustle pool to get things for Sam. His absent father wasn’t really supporting them, and Dean had told me that he hated depending on their family friend, his uncle Bobby, with whom the boys were staying. So he hustled pool. Except tonight he didn’t go there to gamble. He went there to fight.

He didn’t mean to call me. When I picked up the phone I was on my way to my car, circling around the cinema to get to the carpark, rubbing my hands against the chilly night air. The voice on the other end of the phone was drunk and distraught. ‘Sammy.’ It grated. ‘Sammy I need you to tell Bobby where I am. I need him to come get me.’

I went and got him. We barely made it back to my car, as I lugged the six feet of alpha, Blood drying down his cheek, across the parking lot. I had to pull over half-way home as Dean let loose, shouting and whispering, telling me how sorry he was and could I forgive him? - Telling me how frustrating I was and why couldn’t I be an omega? Telling me that he was looking for the one like every other effing alpha on the planet and asking me once again what kind of beta was I anyway? 

I veered to the curb, stopped, applied the handbrake, took a deep breath and turned to him. I looked him in his dark green eyes for the first time in months. I had had enough of pity - from him or from myself.

‘Love isn’t binary.’ I told him shakily. ‘It isn’t even tertiary. People aren’t alphas, omegas and betas. People are infinite.’ Dean blinked and tried to think about that through the alcohol and the pounding head and the aggressive pheromones.

‘Can you forgive me?’ He asked with difficulty.

‘I can kiss you.’ I replied calmly.


	5. The Fifth Time

The fifth time Dean lost his head we had been partners for years. We were staying over at Bobby’s for the holidays. John was home, and he wasn’t speaking to either of his sons. They weren’t speaking back.

Dean and I fought. I forget about what. We had fought before, but never like this. Dean screamed. I was calm and sarcastic; I refused to be cowed; I refused to submit as an omega naturally would. Dean’s eyes flashed red; his blood boiled, the alpha within demanded that the lesser beta yield to him. 

His hand came out, claw-like, and lifted me bodily off the ground. For the first time in a long time, I felt fear curl in my chest.

He came back to himself slowly. He dropped me like I was scalding. He tore from the room and the house.

An hour later, I lay awake and thought about him wandering around the auto-yard. This time he was the ghost.

I crept downstairs at four in the morning when I heard movement. Dean was in the kitchen with his dad and I almost left - I almost didn’t eavesdrop. Except then John said: ‘It wouldn’t have happened if he was an omega. You wouldn’t be able to treat an omega like that. It would be better-‘

Dean had ripped out of the kitchen chair and slammed his hands down on the table, looking directly at his father for the first time since I knew him. ‘No.’ He spat. ‘No. Don’t blame this on instincts. I shouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. Not anyone. Not an omega. Not a beta. Not Cas. I’m better than that. I will never hit in anger again. I will never hit Cas.’

He never did. He loses his head, but he lost his heart a long time ago. Dean is more than an alpha, and I am more than a beta, and we are more than a mistake. We aren’t a Yin and Yang - we don’t fit together perfectly, as we would if we could bond. We have jagged edges that cut into each other. We use words as weapons, and we know just how to wield them, like shards of mirror, cutting into each other with our weaknesses. 

But if he ever left me, if I ever left him, it wouldn’t be a clean cut. It would leave a jagged shadow in its wake. Controlling our instincts, living without heats or bonds or pheromones, are nothing in comparison to that sort of pain. Dean won’t lose his head, for he has given his heart. And I am not some meek beta. I am Castiel Novak, and I refuse to give it up.


End file.
